When NASA is involved in telling how to build and run a system all you get is cost over runs and power point spaceships.

The contractor isn't supposed to tell the buyer what he needs.

newtype_alpha wrote:

But more seriously, the key advantage of the private sector is that bad or inefficient ideas get weeded out much more quickly and efficiently than they would in a public funded bureaucracy, and when they don't get weeded out quickly the firm starts bleeding money until everyone realizes what a bad idea it is.

That's the biggest argument against Heavy Lift I've ever seen. After all, any given HLV with specs like the SLS is going to be hemorrhaging money.

That is true with any space endeavor at first. Musk operated at a loss, and did so because profits were not his only goal--to defend him for a bit--but Apollos success is the biggest arguement for SLS in that it proves HLLVs are good ideas--because it worked

Well to say that nobody wants SLS is just not true. ULA knows that NASA didn't want the EELV albatross on their neck, so they put all this anti-HLV nonsense out. The whole depot libration point deal that folks are carping on now was their idea as a way to kill Ares V that would eliminate depots for lunar returns

"Quite the opposite, actually: the F-35 and systems like it are what happens when some politician says 'We need a plane that can do X, Y, and Z. Let's find someone who wants to build one.'

Life cycle costs on F-35 are going to be over a trillion dollars. That's where I would focus on cuts.

newtype_alpha wrote:

But this whole discussion, I just realized, has now become academic. SpaceX has begun regular cargo flights to the ISS and is well on the way to development of a manned spacecraft. They have effectively proven you wrong already, and the most you can do now is keep shifting the goalposts on an ever-dwindling list of things you don't think private industry can do.

Space X's Falcon Heavy isn't needed for just comsats but for BEO use--and is an entry level HLV--and in house--so it isn't just about profits with him.

They still have ULA to worry about--and in the same way they went after Ares Constellation--they are going after Musk. The October 1 2012 issue of Aviation week has a cover story on Dream Chaser with loads of private spaceflight coverage. Sadly, there was a nasty little op-ed piece on page 10 called "FALCON 9 CALLED INTO QUESTION." I believe this was the same guy who also called RS-68 inefficient. He called Falcon aerodynamically unstable--which I don't buy--then fusses about thousands of pounds of unused kerosene due to the engines 2.2 mixture ration when 3.45 would be better. The fuel rich mixture allows for cheap engines.

Then too, how often have jets dumped even more for landings? I think the writer Dale L. Jensen is probably a ULA man were I to hazard a guess. I remember a lot of his op-eds against Ares V. Now it seems Space X is the new target.